U.S. flag An official website of the United States government.
Official websites use .gov

A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS

A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

i

Pathways to adaptation for shellfish aquaculture on the U.S. West Coast



Details

  • Journal Title:
    Ecology and Society
  • Personal Author:
  • NOAA Program & Office:
  • Description:
    Understanding how shellfish growers adapt to environmental and socioeconomic stressors is critical for food security, especially with growing impacts from climate change. However, we know relatively little about the supporting factors that lead shellfish growers who experience stressors to make adaptive choices. Through interviews conducted with U.S. West Coast (California and Oregon) shellfish farm owners and managers (growers), we document environmental and socioeconomic stressors that growers experience and investigate whether they can adapt, react, or cope (ARC response) to these stressors. We further identify growers’ strategies for adaptation and link these strategies to theoretical adaptive capacity domains (i.e., assets, flexibility, social organization, learning, agency, and governance) using qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). We found regulatory stressors were the most impactful to growers overall. These stressors caused financial burdens and time delays to operations for growers in both states. Ocean acidification and/or hypoxia (OAH) was the most frequently reported environmental stressor. Ocean acidification and/or hypoxia impacts include increased mortality and shellfish die-off events. Out of 125 responses to stressors, growers were able to adapt in just over half of stressor responses (54.4%). Agency, flexibility, learning, and social organization supported adaptation most frequently, while governance was employed the least. Growers responded with cope responses (35.2%) more frequently than react responses (10.4%). Growers combined adaptive capacity domains in various ways to adapt. For example, the adaptive capacity domain of agency was frequently employed, but almost always in combination with other adaptive capacity domains (e.g., assets, governance, flexibility, and learning). This study demonstrates that U.S. West Coast shellfish growers combine adaptive capacity domains in creative ways to form adaptive pathways and illuminates pathways to better support adaptive capacity in shellfish aquaculture.
  • Source:
    Ecology and Society, 31(1)
  • DOI:
  • ISSN:
    1708-3087
  • Format:
    pdf
  • Publisher:
    Resilience Alliance, Inc.
  • Document Type:
    Journal Article
  • Funding:
    Grant no. NA20OAR0170490
  • License:
  • Rights Information:
    CC BY
  • Compliance:
    Submitted
  • Main Document Checksum:
    urn:sha-512:379d1d07fbd4af74fcbc3670af594945f07f8a5029fc6e2f91c6324adb42200bcd229bb049c74d694e2347a50170eee6fefdc8aa3dbc8048f4942da843aabe53
  • Download URL:
  • File Type:
    Filetype[PDF - 1.55 MB ]
PREVIOUS
ON THIS PAGE
Details
The NOAA IR serves as an archival repository of NOAA-published products including scientific findings, journal articles, guidelines, recommendations, or other information authored or co-authored by NOAA or funded partners. As a repository, the NOAA IR retains documents in their original published format to ensure public access to scientific information.
BACK TO TOP